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Senate Dems Praise Hashtag at Hearing

RUSH: Let's go to the audio sound bites and this morning in Washington, Capitol Hill, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs. They held a hearing to review US policy following the abduction of Nigerian schoolgirls by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. I'll be curious to see if this discuss the hashtag as part of American foreign policy. The chairman of this subcommittee is Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware. Let's listen, shall we, to his opening remarks.

COONS: The #BringBackOurGirls hashtag -- which some pundits have mocked -- has been mentioned more than three million times on Twitter!

RUSH: I don't believe it!

COONS: Those tweets, posts on Facebook, Instagram and others --

RUSH: Hold it a minute.

COONS: -- were from people trying to get our attention.

RUSH: Stop the tape! Who could he possibly be talking about here, "which some pundits mocked"? Now, many pundits have, but only one pundit has been acknowledged as having mocked it, and I didn't "mock" the hashtag for people that are powerless. What I thought was pathetic is that the hashtag was being used by officials in the Regime to represent action. Is this all we've got at the administration? (interruption)

Well, how many...? (interruption) They know how many. (interruption) Well, I think Twitter tells you what the retweets are. I think it calculates how many times it gets retweeted. (interruption) You think he's lying about three million retweets? (interruption) You don't Twitter, so how could you possibly...? (interruption) You think that they're gonna start...? (interruption)

Okay, they got three million retweets, and you think some of 'em could be in jest and some could be repeats. You think they're actually gonna count that? They're just gonna count the number. They're crediting the hashtag, is the point. They are crediting the hashtag here. Why are they crediting the hashtag? Because of me. I hate to say it. Here you have a Senate subcommittee hearing, and the first thing cited is the hashtag.

Mike, grab that parody that we had yesterday of Obama getting really mad at Boko Haram and threatening even further drastic action if they don't shape up. Here, folks. This is the way to treat this. (playing of spoof) There you have it. Man, we're really doubling down now! We're really getting tough. We're really drawing red lines now.

By the way, Snerdley, I just had somebody check. The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls is not even in the top trending list of Twitter right now. They've got their top trending tweets, and it's not in there. Okay, back to sound bite number four. It's Chris Coons, Democrat senator from Delaware's opening remarks at the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, reviewing US policy on all of this this morning.

COONS: They're trying to make sure the United States is doing everything it reasonably can to help the Nigerians bring these abducted girls home. It took too long for the Nigerian government to accept offers of assistance from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and China. And once accepted, it took too long for that assistance to the implemented.

RUSH: All right, play it again from the top. Hear this, the way he opened. You just gotta hear this. You don't have to play the whole thing again. We'll parse had it here in just a second.

COONS: The #BringBackOurGirls hashtag -- which some pundits have mocked -- has been mentioned more than three million times on Twitter! And those tweets, posts on Facebook, Instagram, and others, were from people trying to get our attention.

RUSH: All right. That's it. "Which some pundits have mocked." I live rent free in all of these people's heads. Now, it took too long for the Nigerian government to accept offers from us, United Kingdom, France, and China, and once accepted, once they took it, it took too long for that assistance to be implemented. So it's the Nigerian government that is to blame, exactly as I told you how this was coming down yesterday.

I had so many people tell me yesterday, "You know, Rush, I didn't understand all this until your show yesterday. Now I understand." They didn't get it because the story isn't out there. The Nigerian government is being blamed. In fact, they're even being implicated in the kidnapping because they didn't care. They oppressed these guys that became Boko Haram. Boko Haram didn't even exist 'til the Nigerian government, a Christian government, started harassing them, and that's what made 'em organize. And that is, you just heard it, the official position of the Democrat Party, Chris Coons here. And the thing they're hanging their hat on is this hashtag. A great thing, great stuff, great action, caused a lot of people to pay attention. A major, major success here. And then the height of absurdity, Bob Menendez, who came back I guess from his own harem in the Dominican, started speaking up for the rights of women and girls.

MENENDEZ: We must reaffirm and recommit ourselves to the fundamental rule of law everywhere.

RUSH: Why do we have to --

MENENDEZ: As parents --

RUSH: Wait a second. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why do we have to recommit to that? When did we stop being committed to the rule of law everywhere, senator? What do you mean, recommit? Who's running things here? All right, go ahead, finish it.

MENENDEZ: -- as human beings, we must insist women and girls be treated with dignity --

RUSH: Yeah.

MENENDEZ: -- and allowed to live and learn in safety from extremists everywhere.

RUSH: Like you, yeah.

MENENDEZ: The mothers, activists, and concerned citizens who have taken their outrage and grief to the streets of Abuja, London, and Washington, and the electronic highways of Twitter and Facebook, deserve credit for focusing the world's attention on this crisis and insisting that the Nigerian government bring them home.